What the heck has happened to PR since 2008?

[ContraRich77]

What happened to Phantom?????

THEY TOOK SIXTH PLACE LAST NIGHT, YET WON DRUMS!!!!!

Pretty topsy turvy recap............as low as 12th in at least one subcaption, all the way up to first in overall percussion! I thought they were fantastic last night, certainly there is no low placing trend going on, they have in fact JUMPED three placements from last year. I'd call that a pretty healthy upwards swing!

[Kansan]

Phantom was really good but the choice of the WGI uniform on the featured Brass Soloist was really bad. I would have put him in a Gold Colored Phantom Uniform. That alone would have made me like the show a lot more.

[Wadep66]

I love how everyone rags on their guard, yet the guard had a higher score, and the same ordinal placement as the almighty Regiment hornline tonight...

When I look at quarterfinals scores, there are a LOT of anomalies with ordinals from earlier in the season (dare I say "slotting based on perf order"?). I would be willing to place a bet that if you look across earlier in the season you will consistently (meaning almost every time) see the guard ordinal below every other caption for PR. This was the case in 2009 as well.

[Rusty]

I wish they'd go back to King or switch to Yamaha for brass, the difference in the Quantum is noticeable.

From what I've read, Quantum brass have improved substantially over where they were at five years ago. Great. Give 'em an award for Most Improved. But they still aren't in the same league as Yamaha or King, and I think Phantom lost their signature low brass power with the switch.

If it were major staff changes, then maybe one could argue that instructional differences were to blame. But so far as I understand, the same brass staff is in place. They still pretty much have their pick of top-flight talent in the horn line. The only major variable to change is the instrumentation. I do wish they would just bite the bullet and switch back to King. Not likely to happen, though, if Quantum is basically giving them the horns for free.

(Footnote: I love their show this year. More new-agey than I'm used to out of Phantom, but artistically it's hands-down the most beautiful thing on the field this season.)

[jplattSCV]

Me too - I love the musicality of the flag work and find their weapon line to be much better than in years past (especially last year!)

Later,

Mike

How come you never hear it the other way? i.e. "The horn line beautifully expressed that flag toss.".

How do you work a flag musically? Are their holes you blow into? Wouldn't that make it a woodwind?

Just joking. Couldn't resist.

[Rusty]

What happened to Phantom?????

THEY TOOK SIXTH PLACE LAST NIGHT, YET WON DRUMS!!!!!

Pretty topsy turvy recap............as low as 12th in at least one subcaption, all the way up to first in overall percussion! I thought they were fantastic last night, certainly there is no low placing trend going on, they have in fact JUMPED three placements from last year. I'd call that a pretty healthy upwards swing!

Just checked the recap - you weren't kidding. Yikes. Phantom should thank their lucky stars they have Rennick around, because the percussion scores are the only thing keeping them alive.

[4181jay]

At quarters last night phantom were the only corps to make me truly emotional. The most beautiful thing I've seen on a football field for many years. Placements really do mean nothing when a corps moves you like this.

[Guardguy89]

How come you never hear it the other way? i.e. "The horn line beautifully expressed that flag toss.".

How do you work a flag musically? Are their holes you blow into? Wouldn't that make it a woodwind?

Just joking. Couldn't resist.

I know you're joking - but I actually had the drum line write a part of their drum break to my rifle work one year - looked great in the show too! So the drum line expressed my rifle work musically

Later,

Mike

[MikeN]

This.

How Phantom won in 2008 is beyond rational thinking.

Hyperbole much?

Mike

[byline]

How come you never hear it the other way? i.e. "The horn line beautifully expressed that flag toss.".

How do you work a flag musically? Are their holes you blow into? Wouldn't that make it a woodwind?

Just joking. Couldn't resist.

I know you're kidding, but just to clarify: I never wrote a section of equipment work without first listening to the music I was writing to. The music was what inspired me to write a particular way. Sure, I may have played around with various "tricks" and so on, with guard friends seeing who could outdo one another in the creativity department (sort of like a game of H-O-R-S-E in basketball), but that was just playing around, not real writing. I can't think of a single time where I wrote what I thought was a "golly, gee whiz" section of work and then shoehorned it into a musical passage where I knew it didn't fit.

So IMO, it's always going to work that way, never the other way around. It's taking a visual medium to express an aural one. We all have our own definitions of what works, but IMO, the writing that gives me the best visual representation of the music is what works best. That's why I call it "musical" writing.